LIFELESS INFANT FOUND IN CRIB

By Charles Rogers

By Charles Rogers

Emergency vehicles and PSA police rushed to 619 East 108th Street building in the Breukelen Houses complex where mother found her baby's body in crib. (Inset: Police officers leave the scene.) Neil S. FriedmanPolice from the 69th Precinct responded to 619 East 108th Street in the Breukelen Houses complex last Friday at 9:30 a.m. when a mother called them saying she had just discovered her one-month-old baby, who had been asleep in her crib, was not breathing. The police officers im-mediately tried to revive the baby, Emel Stone, and called for Emer-gency Medical Service paramedics, who took the baby to Brookdale Hos-pital where she was officially pronounced dead at 9:50 a.m. by Emer-gency Room Dr. Raja.

The doctor, with corroboration by police, confirmed that there were no signs of trauma or bruises on the in-fant. Raja said the cause of death would tentatively be attributed to Sudden In-fant Death Syndrome (SIDS). An autopsy was to be performed, but the results might not be known "for weeks," police said.

The baby's mother, Viola Laten-dresse, 25, who said she had been living with her parents in the northern Canarsie project, said Emel was a twin and was born exactly a month before her death. Latendresse has two other children, a three-year-old girl and the other female twin, who is in apparently good health. She said the deceased baby was also in good health.

According to officials from the local detective squad, the mother said she woke up at about 6 a.m. Friday and fed and played with Emel and her sister and "everything seemed fine," she told them. She laid the baby in her crib and when she went to check on her a short time later, noticed she was not breathing, she called police.

The medical term SIDS is applied to an infant whose death is sudden and unexpected and remains unexplained after investigation, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Little is known about the causes of SIDS and there is no proven method for prevention. Although studies have identified risk factors for SIDS, there has been little understanding of its biological cause or causes. JAMA says it is responsible for roughly 0.05 percent, or one death per 2,000 births in the United States.